Generally, a character recognition device reads a hand-written or printed character as color image data and recognizes the character by collating the color image data with a pre-registered character pattern.
When recognizing a character in the character frame of some form, such a character recognition device specified a character frame and then recognizes a character from the color image data of the form left after eliminating the specified character frame.
When specifying a character frame, it is necessary for the operator to register character frame information (for example, the shape, color and the like of a character frame) in advance (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 61-253587).
There is also a character recognition device for recognizing a character left after eliminating drop-out color at the time of character recognition, using drop-out color for the character frame of a form. In this case, since information about the drop-out color is already registered in the character recognition device, there is no need for the operator to register character frame information.
However, when the operator registers character frame information in advance, usually it is necessary for the operator to specify the shape, color or the like of a character frame by operating a mouse, keyboard or the like while watching the color image data of a form on a display and thereby the work man-hours of the operator increase.
When using drop-out color for a character frame, a character in a character frame using other color than the drop-out color cannot be recognized.